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Plot was always secondary in my mind.
Dan Chaon
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Dan Chaon
Age: 60
Novelist
Writer
Sidney
Nebraska
Mind
Always
Secondary
Plot
More quotes by Dan Chaon
It is not like a premonition of death. It is as if she died a long time ago, and she just now remembered it.
Dan Chaon
At a certain point, you must be able to slip loose. At a certain point, you found that you had been set free. You could be anyone, he thought. You could be anyone.
Dan Chaon
Writing short stories was kind of like I was cheating the whole time, in some way. I went back and forth between writing the novels and sort of sneaking out to work on stories occasionally. These stories were written over the last 10 years or so, as I was taking breaks from the novels I've written.
Dan Chaon
I think we're always in some ways writing to the teachers who gave us early love.
Dan Chaon
I think at a certain point the book develops a certain weight, or pressure. You've been pushing the rock up the hill for a long time and then it starts to roll and things do start to come together in the last two thirds.
Dan Chaon
The feeling of being an outsider, and the identity theme, are hardwired into me. If there's anything really autobiographical in my fiction, it's that feeling. I always feel that way.
Dan Chaon
One of the things I rarely do is write about sex.
Dan Chaon
Julie Orringer is the real thing, a breathtaking chronicler of the secrets and cruelties underneath the surface of middle-class American life. These are terrific stories-wise, compassionate and haunting.
Dan Chaon
I don't think anybody deals well with tragedy or grief, but maybe my characters are particularly bad at it. Which is why I love them.
Dan Chaon
The thing that made me turn more towards writing was realizing how hard it was going to be to get a singular vision on film and how much more control I would have if I were writing novels.
Dan Chaon
In the end, there probably isn't much difference between being in love and acting like you're in love.
Dan Chaon
I have to admit that 'Psychology Today' was one of the first magazines I started reading, back when I was 13 or 14, because I was the kind of kid that was curious about the mysterious human mind - I hoped to learn about telekenisis, multiple personalities, psychosis, and various other cool and terrible things that happened inside people's heads.
Dan Chaon
I wanted to write a horror story. But in some ways, I have always thought of myself as a kind of ghost-story/horror writer, though most of the time the supernatural never actually appears on stage.
Dan Chaon
There are so many people we could become, and we leave such a trail of bodies through our teens and twenties that it's hard to tell which one is us. How many versions do we abandon over the years?
Dan Chaon
So this was what it felt like to lose yourself. Again. To let go of your future and let it rise up and up until finally you couldn't see it anymore, and you knew that you had to start over.
Dan Chaon
I guess I've been blessed with insomnia because I do a lot of my writing at night. Because I don't sleep as much as I probably should, I have that extra time to write weird stories and think odd thoughts.
Dan Chaon
I was worried that, as a college teacher, if I wrote too much about intergenerational sex my students would be creeped out.
Dan Chaon
The thing that grounds you, and the thing that really gives you a sense of wholeness, is your family, friends and your community. Those are the things that can mirror back to you what you're experiencing, and can affirm to you that the stories you are telling are true.
Dan Chaon
The kind of person I find myself interested in is a cross between being very emotionally complex and very immature. That's what I felt I was like when I was younger.
Dan Chaon
Writing a short story is a little like walking into a dark room, finding a light and turning it on. The light is the end of the story.
Dan Chaon
